Sixteen world and Olympic rowing medallists have published an open letter branding the World Anti-Doping Agency's new 'whereabouts' rule changes "an impractical and unworkable regime".

The Olympians, including Beijing champions Andy Triggs Hodge and Mark Hunter, are strong supporters of 'no-notice' testing in rowing, one of the world's cleanest sports, but have joined tennis stars Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray in criticising the new format. After trying it for six weeks, the rowers say the new rules are extremely difficult to follow.

Their complaint is purely on practical grounds. Athletes must still nominate an hour a day when they can be tested, but now it is for 365 days a year, not just five days a week. And this includes holidays, competitions and travel – days on which it is notoriously difficult to be sure where they will be at any time.

Furthermore, the hour nominated can now only be between 6am and 11pm. This poses particular problems for rowers, who often travel to training in the early morning. Under the old system the hour could start at 5am. Now 6am-7am is impossible for many, who have to leave home in that time.

Rowers are not free for testing when racing or training on the water, as they could be at the far end of a lake or river. They are also unavailable when travelling, in meetings, shopping, in a university lecture or walking the dog. The reality for rowers, training up to three times a day in a team sport, is that now they can barely find a suitable hour every day of the week.

"We can change our hour by phone, online or by text," says Olympic silver medallist Annie Vernon, "but the computer system is very unreliable." Breaks between training sessions are rarely long enough. And if a training session runs over and a tester turns up, it counts as missing the test. Three misses and an athlete is banned from Olympic competition for life.

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"Prior to the changes, 'whereabouts' was just about workable," Vernon says. "Now it feels impossible." She and her fellow athletes, who are all rowing medallists who have spent years co-operating with drug-testers, fully support random testing. But they want Wada to reform the system so that it does not distract from their concentration on training.

"We spend our days panicking, having always to think about when our nominated hour is on that day," finishes the letter. "There are far better ways of catching doping cheats than this."